


don't be afraid, i have loved you for a thousand years

by Duck_Life



Category: Generation X (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst, Friendship/Love, Gen, Krakoa, Resurrection, Team as Family, The vault, X-Men #5 (2019), charles is a bastard man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22551952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Angelo waits for Everett to get out of the Vault.
Relationships: Angelo Espinosa & Everett Thomas, Angelo Espinosa & Paige Guthrie
Kudos: 14





	don't be afraid, i have loved you for a thousand years

“Jubes said you told her a thousand years.” Angelo’s voice is low, and he’s looking down, away from Everett’s face.

Everett scratches the back of his neck. “Won’t feel that long to you.”

“I’m not the one I’m worried about.” Angelo looks up, meeting his eyes, meeting that same infuriatingly neutral expression. “Jesus, man. Why are you _fine_?” 

“How do you want me to react?” Everett says, but now finally, finally, the annoyance is beginning to win out over his constant veneer of _fine_. “What do you think? Tell me how I should feel about all this, Ange, because I don’t… I don’t…” He tucks his arms around himself. “This is the job. I have to do this because I’m the best person for the job.”

“Fuck,” Angelo groans. “No. After you _die_ , after you fucking _die_ for Charles Xavier’s fucking dream, you should get to be done. You should get to be done, Ev. You deserve to be done.” 

“You wish they’d left me dead?”

“Of course not.”

“You wish they’d left you dead?” 

Angelo doesn’t answer. 

* * *

  
  
  
  


“How long now?” Angelo asks, snapping the skin on his hands like overlarge rubber gloves. It’s a nervous habit that tends to make other people leave him alone. In that, it’s been useful. “How long’s it been now?” 

“Mr. Espinosa,” Xavier says delicately, “there are certain details of missions that need to be kept confidential—”

“Just tell me how long,” Angelo says, desperately. “How long, old man? How long—”

“Hey.” And then Paige is there, clamping both hands over his shoulders, and how many people in his life have touched him without wincing, how many people have looked at him with that gentle and concerned look Paige has on now, how many people have— “Come on. Come with me.” 

“Hayseed—”

“Let’s go,” she says, steel in her voice matching the steel that hides beneath her skin. (Or wood, or stone, or whatever she feels like that day). She leads him outside and sits down in the grass with him. 

For a few moments, they just breathe, take in the salty seaside air. They are so far removed from Snow Valley now. So far gone, so far forward, but still just as fucked. 

“You know they brought me back for him?” Angelo says, looking out at the sun setting over the sea. “They needed Ev alive again, they didn’t need me, not so soon anyway. They brought me back for him. I’m not even supposed to be here.” 

Paige takes his hand and grips it tight. 

* * *

  
  
  


“Good morning,” Paige says. 

“Six years,” Angelo says back. 

“What?”

“I did the math. Some of the math,” he explains. “For every day that passes out here, that’s six years for Ev.”

She’s quiet. Then she says, “I think it’s closer to five and a half—”

“Oh, that makes it better,” he says, a sharp bite to his words. “That makes it not horrible. Only five and a half years, every day.” He imagines Everett growing older and older, sprouting gray hair and wrinkles, his body wearing down over time like rocks on the shoreline. 

He imagines Everett dying— again— while he’s in the Vault, his body and bones turning to dust after hundreds and hundreds of years. 

“He knew what he was doing,” Paige says, not really sounding like she believes it. “So did Laura and Darwin.” 

And maybe he’s a dick for not caring as much about Laura and Darwin, but the truth is that they’re just people to him. Fellow mutants, and he does care about them in that regard, but— But Everett is different. Everett is Everett. 

“I thought,” Angelo says, “with the Five, with the eggs and stuff… I thought that meant that all this shit was behind us. Once we can’t die, we’re unstoppable, right? But it just gets worse. They find ways to hurt us without killing us.” 

“I know,” Paige says. She doesn’t argue with him or try to make him feel better. Jubes might, but Paige wouldn’t. She’s hurting, too. They all just got Ev back and now he’s gone again. Angelo feels a sudden burst of annoyance toward his friend— because Everett has never had to lose Angelo, but now Angelo’s had to lose him twice. 

Except, no, that’s not exactly true. Because if Everett is still alive in there, that’s, what, three hundred years now? Three hundred years alive, waiting, with Angelo and Paige and Jubes and Jono and Monet and Mondo, all of them, becoming distant memories. 

“Do you think he stopped missing us eventually?” Angelo says dully. “Maybe after the first 50 years?” 

“It’s Ev,” Paige says. “What do you think?” 

He doesn’t have to think— he knows. 

Even after a thousand years, two thousand— Everett would never forget them, or stop trying to come back to them. 

And that kind of makes the whole damn thing hurt so much more. 


End file.
